It’s official... our repair shops are on the mend

It’s one of the frustrations of modern life: your kettle, tablet or lawnmower stops working just as the warranty period ends. But instead of discarding them and buying replacements, people are increasingly rediscovering their local repair shops.

The number of outlets fixing everything from phones to furniture has risen by more than a third across the UK since 2010, official figures show.

Retail analyst Richard Hyman (right) says it is a “reflection that the consumer economy is clearly not in good shape in Britain” as people tire of the latest gadgets.

He says: “I think the appetite to make-do and mend rather than to buy new is clearly an underlying factor in the economy.

“We have got the idea of ‘peak stuff ’, which is a bit of a fashionable idea and a bit overused but is probably no less true for being so.

“I think there is a bit of a peak stuff movement. It is less cool to be conspicuously consuming.

“With mobile phones in particular, there is the built-in obsolescence of mobile phones where you are instructed to constantly download ‘improvements’, in inverted commas, which are basically designed to slow your machine down and oblige you to buy a new one.

“The fact people rail against that a little bit is not that surprising.”

The modern consumer is looking to spend their money on experiences like eating out rather than physical possessions, according to analyst Kate Hardcastle (above, left).

“People are spending on experiences like never before,” she says.

“I don’t think people are saying, ‘Let’s batten down the hatches’. I think they are spending on totally different things than they used to.

“There is less ‘bragability’ about consuming things like big-label fashion and textiles.”

And there is a growing concern for the environmental effects of our throwaway culture, Hardcastle says.

While some consumers remain happy to buy a fast-fashion outfit and discard it after one wear, she says, the so-called ‘Blue Planet effect’ has seen others try to cut the waste they produce. The household repairs industry is now worth an estimated £3.9bn to the UK economy, the highest value since records began in 1990, with nearly 10,000 business units across the country. The rise of the smartphone has seen the number of phone repair shops in the UK more than triple since 2010, data from the Office for National Statistics shows. But other fix-it businesses are also doing well, the figures suggest.

Furniture restoration shops and home appliance repairers are on the rise, while the number of cobblers’ outlets is holding steady amid tough trading conditions for the UK high street.

Ikea, which famously announced that the western world had probably hit ‘peak stuff ’ in 2016, is among the retail giants now considering how to respond to these changing times. It is piloting a furniture leasing model in Switzerland, as millenials used to streaming movies or renting homes become less attached to the concept of ownership, and bosses are also considering how they can help customers repair their older items. A spokesperson says: “We have an ambition to inspire and enable people to play an active role in making the circular economy a reality, which we can support by developing new ways for people to buy, care for and pass on products.”

Despite the rise in repair shops, the amount Britons throw out remains stubbornly high.

People in the UK threw away half a million tonnes of broken electronics and other e-waste in the year to September 2018, equivalent to the weight of ten Titanics, Government data shows.

Manufacturers are likely to face increasing pressure from lawmakers to make their goods last longer and lessen their impact on the environment.

In December, Environment Secretary Michael Gove called for more goods to be repaired as part of a plan to make the UK a “world leader in resource efficiency, leaving our environment in a better state than we inherited it”.

The strategy said consumers were often “encouraged to replace a damaged item with a new one, even when they’d prefer to repair or reuse it” and called for more manufacturers to provide affordable spare parts or offer repair services.